Saturday, March 18, 2017

ITALY : Urban squatters occupy Church-owned land in Rome

A gardening initiative is taking root on Catholic Church-owned land with the tacit blessing of Pope Francis.

The urban garden, situated in the Tor Tre Teste area on the edge of
Rome, is the brainchild of Omero Lauri, a longtime activist in the
capital’s squatting scene.

For the past four years, Lauri and his friends have been working on
the 37 acres of abandoned land, turning it into fertile plots that Lauri
has opened up — for a €30 a year fee — to some 75 needy families to
farm.

However, the land does not belong to Lauri, but to the Chapter of St
Mary Major, the college of priests who serve the Vatican basilica of the
same name and manage its assets.

A few months after occupying the land in 2013, Lauri and his
friends met with Pope Francis when he celebrated Mass at a nearby
parish, and discussed Rome’s chronic shortage of affordable housing and
land for the poor.

Soon after, Pope Francis asked his chief alms-giver, Mgr Konrad
Krajewski, to get in touch with Lauri and keep tabs on the garden
project. Since then, Lauri has provided Krajewski with regular updates
about the organic initiative, though he is still seeking the coveted
documentation — a contract or a lease.

“I’m very happy that this agreement is working and that these families can use this land,” Krajewski said.

Local authorities, however, haven’t been so thrilled. Lauri reported
that in recent months police have fined him 12,000 euros for the
unauthorised kitchen he’s running out of an abandoned building on the
land.

Many of the farmers are residents of nearby working class neighbourhoods who heard about the initiative by word of mouth.

Marco Mazza received his plot at the start of the year. “They say
that people these days only meet on social networks,” he said. “This is a
real, realistic social network.”

“And if the harvest comes, we won’t complain,” he added. “We’ll be happy.”